The results of numerical computations with real numbers, using floating-point representation, are of unknown precision due to round-off errors.
This should worry everyone making critical calculations. Testing software is laborious and takes even more resources than the designing and implementation of software.
We really need more automatic tools to help in testing and verifying numerical software used in safety critical applications in engineering, economics, medicine, and sciences in general.

In this work we present a C++ implementation of flexible floating-point numbers resembling the unum format that was introduced by John L. Gustafson.
The implementation makes it possible to do some monitoring and analysis of floating-point calculations using unums and interval arithmetic. In addition the importance of floating-point calculation precision and rounding error monitoring automation is discussed with the view of FPGA implementation.

TerraSAR Services and challenges faced with next generation SAR satellites

Authors:
Harsha Chandran
Airbus Defence and Space, Germany

Keywords:

TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X are radar Earth observation satellites, which are a joint venture between the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and Airbus Defence and Space. The satellites carry a high frequency X-band SAR sensor, which can be operated in flexible imaging modes in order to meet the requirements of versatile applications. A SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar Instrument) sensor scans the Earth’s surface from satellites with the help of microwave pulses. The satellites are controlled, operated, scientifically explored by DLR while the commercial exploration is undertaken by Airbus Defence and Space Germany.

As the SAR Services move towards the future of the next generation satellite starting with HRWS there are many challenges that are faced within the ground receiving facility as well.
DRS (Direct Receiving Station) infrastructure installed in the customer side is used for data reception from TSX-X and TDX Satellites. Order handling of commercial acquisitions, reception, processing, archiving and cataloguing and delivery of products for TerraSAR-X are some of the main tasks performed within DRS-MM (Multi-Mission). The Near real time (NRT) data that is expected to be delivered with certain time gets faster. The data resolution that is received on the ground from the satellite becomes better; hence the data received also becomes exponentially larger. The Earth observation radar data moves towards the cloud for processing and storage. The changes with the existing ground stations with respect to new generations of satellites will be governed by the market driven approach and the customer demand. The data that the customer expects is not just the raw SAR image but a set of high reliable SAR data(acquired over large period of time) with analytics included, can be called “smart data”.

The complexity of modern projects, especially in the software industry, require formalised tracking at the same time as allowing modern methodologies such as Agile methods to be used to ensure the right product is delivered. The presentation will introduce a few methods for controlling and tracking projects as well as the highlighting the environment under which the practices are best used.

The presentation will also give a very brief introduction to Automation in shipping container terminals and the technologies used

The Internet of Things: the Good, the Bad and the Insane

Authors:
Johan Dams
WRD Systems, UK

Keywords:

Over the past few years, we have seen that the development of electronic devices that connect to the Internet, either directly or through a gateway, is being consolidated under the term ’Internet of Things’ or ’IoT’ in short. This development has brought with it an accelerated push to make devices that monitor, record and send sensor data to the cloud, and is headed towards incorporating artificial intelligence to make sense of this vast body of data. We see more and more devices that require some sort of network connectivity as part of its core functionality, both at consumer and industrial level.
While this development has created some great applications with potential for many more, it also has a darker side that can not be ignored. Some of the ideas that have been, or are being implemented, border on legal, practical and ethical boundaries and sometimes cross them - or indeed are just insane to begin with. In addition, security issues are still to this day underestimated and cause additional problems that do not have an easy fix.
This paper will illustrate some of these developments and presents the research done as part of an independent research effort by the R&D unit of WRD Systems. The company has extensive experience in design and implementation of devices that fall under the IoT designation, and has been contracted for their development by both industry and government.

An Open Platform for the Development and Trials of Mobility Solutions (PASMO)

Smart communities are beyond the concept of smart cities as they enable new forms of territorial organization and interaction with the citizens which can then benefit from new functionalities, services and results from data collection and analysis.
Mobility is one of the intervention fields in smart cities and smart communities, currently, due to the crowded urban environments, one the most critical.
Mobility has strong impact in economy, energy, wellbeing, health, pollution, safety. Technological mobility solutions are often proprietary and interoperation is normally a challenge. In this sense, the Telecommunications Institute has launched the PASMO Platform in order to create an open environment for field trials, enterprise cooperation with interoperable or at least connected solutions in a zone with particular characteristics, adequate to illustrate the concepts of smart communities.
The PASMO platform will cover a region in the city of Ilhavo, near Aveiro, near the sea, with urban environment all the year and also severe peak occupation during summer, with motorways, roads and streets, beaches, a harbor, an industrial zone, railway and influence from a small military airport.
The PASMO platform starts with an almost full coverage in the zone of communications infrastructures, from vehicular (ETSI ITS G5 / 80’2.11p) to IoT (BLE, LoRa and Sigfox) and easy connection to the mobile network. As demonstration applications the project uses smart parking with also a significant coverage and a mobile based incremental solution that improves eCall.
The PASMO project includes training workshops for the companies that adhere to test solutions and products and infrastructures to collect massive data and, after anonymity procedures, make them available for analytics purposes.
The project was funded by the European Structural Investment Funds (ESIF), through the Regional Operational Program of Centre (CENTRO 2020) [Project Nº. CENTRO-01-0246-FEDER-000008 and has started in May 2017. International participation is welcome.

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) in recent years became more and more important for a tremendous community of users worldwide. This is due to the fact that on the one hand navigation systems are either available at reasonable prices or are even – without additional cost or charge – directly integrated into devices like smart phones. On the other hand the number of GNSS applications continuously increased: These days navigation systems are not only used to determine the user’s position on earth or to calculate a specific route from a given point A to another given point B, but navigation systems are being used in agriculture for what is called precision farming, they are used for land survey, for determining precise postions at construction sites as well as for save-and-rescue actions of people in need, e.g. in case of marine incidents or avalanche accidents.

This paper is intended to show that Finite Fields, of called Galois Fields, play a significant role within GNSS. We will show that specific Galois Fields, which are defined by a so called primitive or generator polynomial directly lead to Linear Feedback Shift Register (LFSR) Circuits. These LFSRs generate pseudo random sequences with good periodic autocorrelation properties. Since these sequences, which are often called m-sequences, contain rather poor cross-correlation properties, certain LFSR-extensions lead to sequences with good autocorrelation properties and at the same time good cross-correlation properties. The resulting circuits are used in the US Global Navigation Satellite System GPS (Global Positioning System) as well as in the European GNSS GALILEO. Throughout this paper we will provide insight into how different LFSR circuits are being used in the mentioned GNSS.

Design and Implementation of a software-based Realtime-Simulation-System for high speed Nanopore Sequencing Data Analysis

DNA sequencing is a fast-growing field in bioinformatics. One of the newest advances is the Oxford Nanopore Technologies MinION. It is the first portable real time device for DNA and RNA sequencing. It differs from previous technologies in that MinION produces sequences online which means that they appear in real-time on the user's computer ready to be analyzed. A so called ‘read’ in the context is the DNA-information of a short segment of the entire DNA sequence to be analysed. Since e.g. the DNA sequence of human beings consists of approximately 3.1 billion base pairs, a read usually contains the DNA information of several hundred or a few thousand base pairs.

This work aims to produce a user-friendly python application for the simulation of realistic Nanopore reads in real-time. The simulator enables the user to answer specific biological questions by varying the input reference genome, changing the error rate for the simulated read or selecting different configuration parameters to simulate the desired data - all without the need of a physical sequencer. The simulator supplies the user with real time generated data containing event and read data and thus the possibility to use the produced read or reject it prematurely, a method termed “Read Until”.

The developed simulation tool uses the underlying concept of current next-generation sequencing simulators, which aim to reproduce the output data of real sequencing processes by considering all the steps that could influence the outcome of the reads. The simulator uses a configuration file in conjunction with a template model file and a reference input genome file to simulate Oxford Nanopore Technologies sequencing data. It can simulate event data as well as raw data by imitating the behaviour of the sequencing device for a varying number of simulation reads and a configurable error rate. The object-oriented software design enables an easy integration into other systems and allows to extend the research of MinION sequencing data.

As a result of this work, a tool for the simulation of the Oxford Nanopore Technologies MinION sequencer was successfully implemented.

APPLE is an EU-funded project in Key Action 2 – Capacity Building in the field of Higher Education. The main target is to enhance education related to space exploration and intelligent robotic systems. During the project we will investigate different possible implementations of course material with supporting lab equipment, check learning effectiveness of applied laboratory work and create new or modernize existing educational programs in space exploration and intelligent robotic system and satellite technology. All is done in accordance with the recommendations of the Bologna Process.
During the project typical design issues in hard- and software for dependable reliable space systems will be covered, keeping in mind all the relevant preconditions and limitations in mass, volume, power, space environment, launch conditions. Another focus is on competence development, relevant to the local labor market in space exploration. This should ensure the availability of a high-skilled workforce in the domain of space systems design.

Cloud and Mobile Computing

Cloud computing is growing and will be the primary way to build the service infrastructure for apps. Cloud computing offers many possibilities, like developing mobile apps, which can be used by millions of users. Using cloud, we do not need to use traditional server-side languages such as Java or C# to build the cloud element of our app. By using the Node server, we can run JavaScript on the server side. This means we can use a single language for all the development.
Using cloud, we can achieve the following advantages:

Low cost: it is easy to get started as we only pay for what we use.

High capacity: the cloud can provide with as much bandwidth and storage as we need.

Flexibility: we can add and remove servers and databases very quickly, we can add capacity in the geographic regions where needed, and we can easily integrate with third-party services.

Low maintenance: no need to worry about system administration or configuration. We can use prebuilt and preconfigured machines. We can use cloud databases that do not have to be tuned for performance.

Mobile web apps are websites run in a web browser on a mobile device. We can bookmark these web apps on the home screen of the device and we can give them icons and loading screens. Hybrid native apps are native apps that run a web browser inside itself. The entire app user interface is a web page that runs HTML5 code. A wrapper system, such as the open source PhoneGap can be used to create a native wrapper. The huge advantage of mobile web apps is that they are ultimately just websites, which means they do not have to be submitted to any app stores for approval. They can be updated frequently and they can be accessed from almost all smartphones.
Hybrid native apps have the advantage of being proper apps that are listed in the app stores. They can use a device to its full potential and we can extend these apps with native code if necessary. Interestingly, many purely native apps make extensive use of HTML5 WebView controls. This is the main way to display rich text interfaces even for purely native apps.
The main reasons for developing an app using HTML5 whether as a mobile web app or within a hybrid native wrapper are:

Cross-platform: the app is automatically cross-platform and we need to develop it only once.

Standards compliant: HTML as a technology choice is a safe choice and it is quickly becoming the primary means of building user interfaces on any device, including mobile devices.

Lower-cost rapid development: developing apps with HTML, CSS and JavaScript means that we can build and iterate very quickly.

Low-friction deployment: mobile web apps can be launched immediately without waiting for a third-party approval process.

Easy to learn: in addition to having a good knowledge of web languages we just need to learn to deal with particularities of mobile we app development. But, we do not need to invest any time in learning a new language such as Android or Swift, etc.

JavaScript: JavaScript is emerging as the next high industry language. This change is happening because it is now possible to use JavaScript not only for websites but also for mobile apps and for server code.

Nowadays e-commerce field is full of questions like: “How to improve my website ranking?” or “which is the best website to publish ads in?”. this kind of problems fall into what’s known as Multi-Criteria Decision Making problems in which a set of criteria has to be carefully defined and evaluated especially in case of uncertainty.
To tackle this challenge, the authors of this paper present an application of a brain-inspired method, in which criteria’ weight are extracted on the basis of pair-wise comparison matrices. Afterwards, the set of criteria are used to rank a set of medical institutions’ websites.

It is very important to manage the position of the blocks in the shipyard where the work is completed, or the blocks need to be moved for the next process operation. The moving distance of the block increases according to the position of the block stockyard, As the travel distance increases, the number of trips and travel distance of the transporter increases, which causes a great deal of cost regarding operation cost. Currently, the selection of the block position in the shipyard is based on the know-how of picking up a transporter worker by the production schedule of the block, and the location where the block is to be placed is determined according to the situation in the stockyard. After the block is transported, the location management is handwritten and managed. It is not properly managed by human error.
This study proposes a transporter optimal operation system that can efficiently manage block logistics and support block movement planning using method of selection stockyard and optimal path search of transporter. Finally, we have developed a prototype and proved the validity of this system.

Figure 1. Features and Configuration of Transporter Optimal Operating System

Acknowledgment
This work was supported by National IT Industry Promotion Agency(NIPA) grant funded by the Korea government(MSIP) (S0602-17-1016, Development and commercialization of safety education·training VR contents of sailor using virtual reality technology)

Towards the digitalization of power distribution substations

This presentation delineates the parts of a digital substation protection and control system, from the process level of the power distribution system to the control room, and describes the current status of digitalization employing the existing state-of-the-art equipment and technologies. The path towards the digitalization of the substation protection and control system includes further improvements in reliability, safety and flexibility and increases the uses of current trends in the industry, such as internet-of-things (IoT) and sensor technology, to bring novel features and possibilities. Digitalization, in compliance with standards such as the IEC 61850, promotes equipment interoperability, the utilization and sharing of data throughout the system and the integration towards the Industry 4.0. Digitalization supports the more intelligent usage, control and processing of available data to facilitate both operation and maintenance of assets. One of the main concepts is the centralized protection and control (CPC) system that has the capacity to concentrate and process all substation protection, control, supervision and metering functionalities in a central point at the station level.

In order to highlight the benefits of digitalization in this context, this presentation describes: (i) the requirements for digitalization of power distribution substation; and (ii) the state-of-the-art technology and equipment involved (low-power instrument transformers, UniGear Digital and centralized protection and control system).
As conclusion, the digitalization of substation protection and control systems favors energy savings and investment reduction in both project and operation phases; supports reliability and fast system performance; and optimizes man-hours spent in testing, commissioning and maintenance of equipment.

Soft Computing in Excavator Application

Artificial intelligence seems to be a demanded method, suitable to realize only by the high-power computers and far from the everyday living. The one part of Artificial Intelligence is Soft Computing. These new calculation methods ware found by following for example the ants, the bees and the functions of the neural shells.

Soft Computing includes for example neural network, fuzzy logic, Genetic algorithms and swarm intelligence.
Soft Computing is suitable in the practical applications, also. As an example, it can automatic calibrate the excavator deep meter system.

The Open Source Applications for Industrial Automation (OpenIn) project is a three year duration Project funded by the European Union Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships Programme, started in October, 2016 and it involves 4 partners across Europe. The development of professional automated industrial systems nowadays is still a “proprietary technology” at high costs, which in a way impede its development and makes its implementation complicated.

This project aims at helping higher VET and HEIs institutions, Technical Universities as well as enterprises using automation systems (especially SMEs) to cut costs and embrace innovation by providing them with Training Courses for both students and teachers on free open source hardware and software for designing automated systems. It was decided that the platform for teaching and training will be Arduino. In the proposed paper the aims and objectives of the project will be outlined. The Openin course of students in Industrial Automation using Open Source Applications - it will be a Training course for EQF level 5+ students in the field of Industrial Automation and concerning the following topics: a) Industrial Sensors, b) Industrial Communication will be described.

Professional life is nowadays heavily depending on mobility and demands professionals to excel in communication skills at an international, cross-cultural environment. However, soft skills, as well as international exposure, are rarely addressed by undergraduate courses. Each year an Academic International Mobility program takes place in Universities, blending students from different EU countries who participate in designing and developing a business idea. The aim of the project is to remodel international mobility and empower students’ employability through blended mobility. The goal of Blended Aim 2017 was to develop a collection of applications for indoor position tracker.

Most companies hire security guards that control the safety and integrity of the company and its employees. But who keeps the guards safe? What if a guard gets lost? What if they need to get in contact with their supervisor? Who will get notified in case of an emergency? The purpose of this year participants was to analyze and provide a solution accordingly. were asked to provide a solution. The solution we came up with was Gabriel. Gabriel is a collection of three web sites, two Android applications and the backend that supports their connection. With Gabriel installed on their mobile phone every worker or guard has an application that pinpoints their location on the company map, through a checkpoint system, and allows them to communicate with the supervisor that looks out for them directly. The supervisor uses the web sites of Gabriel that allow him to locate each employee at any moment and respond if there’s a situation. Also through the websites, the supervisor can register new employees and new maps or modify the existing ones.

The students were divided into three scrum teams, and the application was divided into three main sections, the Android applications, the frontend and the backend. In each of these sections, a team was assigned. The students of TEI of Crete worked on the android applications and mostly on the main application. Their main tasks were the implementation of the design of the application, including all the functionalities such as the checkpoint detection, chat communication, emergency calls (buttons that indicate the incident / direct phone calls), inactivity periods of the worker (movement and app usage) and the login-logout. In the checkpoint detection section, their tasks were to detect the position of the employee according to nearby beacons that were used to map a particular area of the company. The communication with the websites was accomplished through the use of WebSockets. REST API is used for the login section, as well as for user information. All the previously mentioned capabilities were implemented by using technologies like Android, Retrofit2, Estimote API, Json, Gson, WebSockets, and Java.

Recognition of specific short DNA sequence patterns in an electric current stream generated by a nanopore DNA sequencing device

In 2014 a new method for DNA sequencing has become commercially available when the British company Oxford Nanopore Technologies introduced their MinION DNA
sequencer. It is a small and portable device powered by a USB interface which enables the user to perform DNA sequencing almost anywhere anytime. Moreover it enables DNA analysis in real time, which immensely reduces the time to answer a biological question, through a stream of electric current that represents the DNA sequence. Another speed up can be achieved using a method called selective sequencing. If the importance of the sample being sequenced could be determined in real-time the
sequencing time would only be used for samples bringing closer the biological answer and unimportant samples could be neglected.

This paper points out a method enabling real time selective sequencing by finding short DNA sequences within the stream of electric current. To do this, patterns of current values are chosen that represent significant DNA sequence snippets. These patterns are recognized in the stream of electric current values leading to a kind of landmarks within the sample. Finding multiple of these landmarks in the stream gives the means to find the position of the sample within the whole genome. Chains of the landmarks are indexed per genome and may be looked up in an index file on-the-fly. As only some significant snippets can be discovered, the accuracy is first off limited, but increases with every newly found landmark in the sample. So a trade off needs to be found between time and accuracy. This paper is a work in progress status report. Different parameters were discovered and the correlation of them.

Kilometer Management: Mobile and Desktop Applications for the Employees of Pasi-Jakelut Oy

The traditional ways of exchanging information between various business operations is time-consuming and tedious, so the use of new technologies is necessary and growing rapidly. As a result, mobile applications as well as desktop applications, have gained popularity among users.
The idea of this project was to develop a hybrid mobile and desktop application that would offer the employee of Pasi-Jakelut Oy, an easy and efficient way to exchange information. A supervisor can use the desktop application at the office, and the deliverers can use the mobile application.
The desktop application allows the supervisor at the office to log in, manage kilometer details of the deliverers, add new deliverers, edit and delete the deliverers, add new areas, edit and remove areas, send messages as well as edit and delete messages. The mobile application allows the deliverers to log in with the login credentials provided by the supervisor, send kilometer details of their respective areas, view and send messages, update profiles and change passwords.

The desktop application was developed using PHP Desktop GUI Framework, and the mobile application was developed using Ionic 2 Framework. On the server side, PHP was used, and MySQL database was used to store the data.

Feasibility of a multi-tier Cyber Physical System as a Self-Aware Entity

Authors:
Kalle Tammemäe
Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia

Keywords:

The paper discuss about awareness of a CPS where self-awareness can be reached hierarchically combining information over the several processing levels. Also, an achievable awareness level the microcontroller system on base of less than MByte range of internal main memory is analyzed. For a case study an ARM based MCU (TM4C123G) has been chosen with 32KB of SRAM in a specific application domain - home patient monitoring. In [JT14] four levels of a CPS awareness are defined. When awareness levels 0 (controller) and 1 (PID-controller) are easily achievable on a regular microcontroller platform, then the awareness level 2 (selfinspection) can be reached only partially due to memory limits. The higher level of awareness can be achieved at the higher level controller with more resources, especially with abundance
of working memory to keep and run the dynamic model of the environment. Lower level controller is responsible for basic detection of the anomalous situation needing higher level processing, after that the sensory data will be forwarded upwards with only a modest preprocessing.
The approach enables to control the power consumption of the system - when the situation is stable and without remarkable changes, the controllers suppress the communication and maximize the usage of the sleep mode. An experimental the first tier controller is using Omron MEMS modules (D6T-44L-06) to detect the human presence and very roughly human repositioning in an infrared spectrum [Tam17]. With two OMRON units 90 degrees of a visual field can be observed in arrangement 8x4 pixels (each pixel covering approximately 10 degrees of visual field both vertically and horizontally).
The role of the first tier controllers is to act as a low-resolution retina, running simple signal preprocessing activities. Data fusion of multiple sensors is used to enhance the trustfulness of the information to be forwarded to the higher tier processing node, where awareness of the situation will be developed.